Schools in Newham have received awards for their work to improve their Religious Education classes.

Three schools - Hallsville Primary and St Luke’s Primary in Canning Town and Curwen Primary in Plaistow - applied for a Religious Education Quality Mark (REQM), which recognises efforts to give children the best possible experience when learning about religion.

Curwen and St Luke’s received a gold mark, while Hallsville was awarded a silver mark.

Reception pupils at Hallsville Primary built a role-play church in their classroom for children to play in after visiting St John’s Church in Stratford.

Other work at the schools included paintings and displays.

Jenny Parson from St Luke’s said: “We were delighted to be awarded the REQM Gold award. It was wonderful to have all the school’s hard work and progress recognised.

“The process itself was really helpful as it allowed us to pinpoint the areas that we needed to focus on. We were able to promote the use of higher order thinking skills and more challenging RE across the school as a result.”

The REQM is awarded by the Religious Education Council, a national body of groups which focus on religious teaching, and include the British Humanist Association.

Julie Pointer, Hallsville Primary, said: “Although it was hard work to gather and collate evidence of all the outstanding RE going on in our school, it was a very rewarding and worthwhile experience which enabled me as a Co-ordinator to reflect on what we do already and what we need to do in the future to make RE at Hallsville even better.”

Claire Clinton, a Religious Education advisor on Newham’s SACRE board, said: “For a school to gain a bronze is an exceptional performance, so I feel incredibly proud of these three schools who have worked consistently hard at improving children’s experience of RE at their schools over many years.”